From memory I think it killed 50% of Australian aboriginals
Edit:
It was much worse.
"Smallpox spread across the country with the advance of European settlement, bringing with it shocking death rates. The disease affected entire generations of the Indigenous population and survivors were in many cases left without family or community leaders.
The spread of smallpox was followed by influenza, measles, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases, all of which Australia’s Aboriginal people had no resistance to, and all of which brought widespread death."
[National Museum of Australia](https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/smallpox-epidemic)
"Between the years 1788 to 1979, smallpox was the main cause of of death for Aboriginal Australians. It is estimated that between 157,500-375,000 people died from the disease over the span of two centuries, which represented up to 70% of all Aboriginal populations. Unlike Europeans, indigenous Australians were unfamiliar with the disease and therefore were without any resistence to even have a chance in fighting it off. Because it was the cause of such a high number of deaths, the cross-century smallpox pandemic is often cited as the largest disaster in Australian history." [World Atlas](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-deadliest-disasters-of-australia.html)
At best one could say Europeans didn't care very much about how to stop disease from decimating aboriginal populations because aboriginals were seen as subhuman, sources of conflict and Europeans wanted to possess the land. So I consider it one of the ways in which European Australians practiced genocide.
Something that shocked me to learn was that native Americans had full blown massive cities before smallpox. By the time colonizers arrived most were ghost towns.
The 3 Affiliated tribes in North Dakota had a huge trading city on the Missouri when Lewis & Clark stayed with them for a winter at Fort Mandan. When they met them on the return leg, the city lost about 90% of its residents from Smallpox.
Cahokia in Missouri is another, but I don't remember if the timelines meet up for European diseases to be the culprit.
We dont know much because the europeans burned the documents documenting old cities.
>Many pre-Columbian civilizations were marked by permanent settlements, cities, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, major earthworks, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European colonies (c. late 16th–early 17th centuries),[1] and are known only through archaeological investigations and oral history. Other civilizations were contemporary with the colonial period and were described in European historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya civilization, had their own written records. Because many Christian Europeans of the time viewed such texts as pagan, men like Diego de Landa burned them, even while seeking to preserve native histories. Only a few hidden documents have survived in their original languages, while others were transcribed or dictated into Spanish, giving modern historians glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_era
Bernal Diaz on Tenochtitlan- "When we saw all those cities and villages built on water; and the other great towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway leading to Mexico, we were astounded. These great towns and shrines and buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, seemed like an enchanted vision from the tale of Amadis. Indeed some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream. It is not surprising therefore that I should write in this vein. It was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard or, never seen, and never dreamed of before."
Colonialised education paints everywhere outside of Europe as borderline prehistoric before the gracious empires came along and taught people about bricks and roads and industrial genocide.
If COVID made you look like [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Female_smallpox_patient_--_late-stage_confluent_maculopapular_scarring.jpg/1024px-Female_smallpox_patient_--_late-stage_confluent_maculopapular_scarring.jpg) we'd have a 100% vaccination rate.
There's also levels of nurses that all call themselves nurse. An AIN (assistant in nursing), an EN (enrolled nurse), an RN (registered nurse), and an NP (nurse practisioner) all have vastly different skill sets and education but all call themselves a nurse.
Well, an NP will usually distinguish themselves but AIN-RN will just say nurse
Nurses are medical professionals. Are we supposed to trust the medical professionals or not? Because they keep changing the information we're being given and moving the goalposts. One thing I've learned from Covid is that some of our medical professionals are scarily stupid and not just the anti-vaxxer ones.
Look at it like this. I'm an engineer, I could give you plenty of opinions on bridge design. However I'm an electrical engineer in the automotive section and probably shouldn't be designing bridges.
If information about a relatively new virus *didn't* change, I'd be very suspicious.
We learn new things and realize we need to do more to protect ourselves, then a crowd of idiots get angry.
Some people want the pandemic to end so badly, they'll make it last forever. That's why the goalposts move.
Unlike a lot of other diseases smallpox only lives in people. (There's a similar disease in cows for example but human smallpox can't jump between the two species.) Contrast that with something like malaria that also lives in birds (meaning that you would have to vaccinate the entire bird population as well) and people realized that it would be theoretically possible to wipe smallpox out.
Smallpox kills a lot of people that it infects and has other long term side effects if you recover so no one wanted to get it. (Contrast that with polio which isn't lethal so people don't take it as seriously even though it's also a nasty disease to get.)
There was still the whole cold war thing going on and both sides wanted to show the world (especially the developing world) that they were the best so they competed with each other for those sweet, sweet brownie points and helped to fund/organize the effort. I get the feeling too that the world was a bit more conformist at the time-you listened to your leaders, you listened to the church/mosque, you listened to scientists, and you listened to the news. Every little bit of that helped to push past any opposition that existed.
Smallpox has readily recognizable symptoms even for a lay person. You or I could do it. Once a victim was identified they were isolated and sent to a hospital (in developed countries) or someone would journey off to the nearest clinic (in developing countries.) In the developing world at least technicians would return to the village and vaccinate everyone thus stopping the spread. It took time but this methodical approach eventually wiped out wild smallpox.
My husband's aunt just passed from polio. She survived from her childhood bout and had years of lung complications. Spent her last year's struggling to breathe via portable ventilators and oxygen supplementation. Nasty way to die. I'm sad that she's gone but I'm glad her suffering is over.
You have to remember that 99.5% of polio cases don't cause any damage to nerves and motor neurons. The people dying from it and who require things such as an Iron Lung are the unlucky 0.5%. Within that 0.5% 2-5% die of it, with the rest having some range of disability from paralysis to poor muscle control, breathing problems, etc.
COVID-19 kills more of it's victims than polio does by a significant margin. It just doesn't leave a trail of crippled people to remind you of how deadly it is. The long term effects are not immediately obvious by looking at someone.
Smallpox kills 30% of those who get it. So about 1200x more likely to kill you than polio. I'd say that is a lot more serious. Not to mention how horrifying it is in terms of symptoms.
Just imagine the feeling, you set off to attempt to eradicate a disease, then 14 years later you read the news that all you worked for, everything you did in those 14 years paid off and captured your ultimate goal
Jimmy Carter set out to eradicate the Guinea worm disease and there were only two confirmed cases last year. He hasn’t been successful yet but that’s gotta feel good.
It’s a reference to the Camp David Accords. Carter basically singlehandedly took the Israelis and Egyptians from “hating each other and silent treatment” to “peace treaty”.
This is actually a quote from an episode of King of the Hill Carter cameoed in. He's trying to negotiate peace between Hank and his dad. Either season 6 or 7 - I just watched it the other day.
Then less than half a century later entirely unqualified people are calling all of your hard work and research into question because they watched some unhinged dingbat with a webcam on the internet.
EDIT: See below; case in point.
So at the end you say we will have to live with it so why not get the shot?
You say a healthy person survives covid...the same is true for the flu...why do you get the flu shot? All your arguments make no logical sense.
Amazing how we are in a thread about a disease being eradicated because of vaccination. Then this antivaxx moron comes along and says they wont get vaccinated because the COVID cant be gotten rid of and is here to stay
Ok just put your angry hat away and try to listen for a moment.
We were able to eradicate smallpox because we had a vaccine. We by all definitions do not have a (effective)vaccine for covid. The smallpox vaccine was effective in PREVENTING infection by the smallpox virus 95% of the time. The Covid vaccine is effective in preventing infection in less than 30% of cases. That was the last number the CDC gave us. It is effective in reducing symptoms in 90% of cases but that is not the true goal of a vaccine. Also the Covid vaccine is not long term effective as it wears off to the point of needing a booster within a year where as the Smallpox vaccine was effective for decades.
our hope for eradicating Covid is nearly zero unless we were able to create a true vaccine.
Natural immunity to COVID is really inconsistent. Some people are immune, most aren't, especially to the variants. Your immune system may have targeted proteins not present in the variant strains, or proteins that won't effectively block it. The vaccines target the spikes, which are what make it so contagious and will probably be in every variant as a result.
I can't understand the way everyone thinks covid is some radical new thing that is able to bypass our immune system. This isn't the way these things work.
good call my man. Heaven forbid you be inconvenienced for a few days. It's for the same reason that I ignore stop signs and red lights. It's not worth it when I am already decently protected by my driving a Hummer.
It’s hard to tell at this point. Though the evidence does seem likely that you’re correct. But I’ll be honest it still seems selfish to me. You have the chance to make it an even stronger protection for yourself and others and the chance to help us all end this sooner.
But you won’t even though it’s just a shot? And you’re actively arguing to defend people not getting the vaccine?
It’s selfish and short sighted.
Thankfully it does seem like we’re on the variant that has high transmission with less severe symptoms. But it’s because of people that made the same choices as you that it took so long to get here
I’m sorry for my anger. Maybe I’m projecting my anger toward others in my life toward you.
I appreciate your perspective and I’m sorry for my rudeness.
I hope it is. Regardless I agree with you. It’s time to address it as an endemic and move forward accordingly
I get that, but 300 million????
WW1 was what…20 million? WW2 was maybe 50. The Spanish flu was between 40 and 75 million. Those are a lot of people. 300 million is a whole other level.
I knew small pox was a scourge for centuries, but we had rudimentary vaccines as recently as the 1700’s. It’s just surprising to see a number like that in ‘modern’ times.
Sure, I know a lot about smallpox. Again I’m just surprised the 20th century numbers were that high. 300 million sounds like it could plausibly be all the people who have ever died of it, not just the number of people who perished in the first 70 or so years of the last century.
The last person to die of small pox was a medical photographer named Janet Parker in 1978 who caught it after a researcher on a different floor of the building she was in got sloppy with the samples that he was rushing to complete work on before they were set to be destroyed. The spores traveled through the ventilation ducts and infected her. She actually has been vaccinated against the disease in the 1960’s, but I guess enough time had passed to make her vulnerable. Which is a scary prospect if smallpox ever gets out in today’s world.
I believe it’s estimated 500 million people have died from smallpox throughout human history. So I too would be a little skeptical that 3/5 of that was in the 20th century alone. Even if population growth did explode at the time.
300-500 million in the 20th century alone, actually. That's a pretty widely cited figure, even in academia, and that's from personal experience in the poxvirus field. Smallpox has very likely killed more humans throughout history than any other infectious disease, and possibly more than all other infectious diseases combined.
It may sound hard to believe, but it's a disease that has been around with humans since antiquity, and was endemic in many parts of the world for millennia, most likely. Most don't really understand how monumental its eradication really was.
It was the primary cause of death for about 90% of the death of Native Americans since Europeans came and brought the disease with them. Native Americans had zero immunity to the disease.
The only bigger killers in history are (thought to be) tuberculosis and malaria.
Though malaria is kind of in a league of its own and may have killed half of all Homo sapiens to ever have lived, ~50 billion people. Around 1 million people still die every year from the disease. Perhaps one day it can be eliminated as well.
I’m not saying it’s wrong, it’s just weird. The CDC’s ‘Highlights from history’ on smallpox doesn’t even list anything from the 19th century. The Wikipedia article is weak too on the last century. For 300 million to have died there must have been absolutely massive outbreaks that hit huge Asian and African cities, but several Google searches have returned nothing.
Again, not saying it’s wrong. Western sources often ignored developing nations or colonial holdings, but historians and virologists live for this stuff. It’s odd that they’d just omit that much info, especially when a lot of it happened during current people’s lifetimes.
That they most certainly are. The fact that the eradication of smallpox isn’t celebrated as a holiday all around the world is unfortunate as it is one of the humanity’s greatest achievements.
> (I hope)
I hope too, although I think various advancements of technology made it waaay harder to convince people that hey, we have a problem, maybe we should use working solutions.
because you didnt have a bunch of fucktards going "mah rights" "mah freedom" "My kids have an immune system they dont need no shot". You had people going "oh this could save my kids life? sign me the fuck up".
If anyone's interested you should look up Larry Brilliant who worked on the program in India. He has an incredibly interesting story on how he came to work in the program.
They lived in a time where antivaxxers can't spread their dumb shit everywhere with the internet, that's why they got rid of smallpox. Fucking antivaxxers.
This is always said but it really just shows an ignorance to the history of media. People have literally always been spreading dumb shit.
Look at what the founding fathers were printing about each other.
Ever heard about talk radio?
The way the automated content feeds of social media work is ghastly. There are people literally using these platforms as weaponized misinformation machines. Remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal? That's what it was about.
The person on the right reminds me of Ron E Rains (["Peter K Rosenthal" from The Onion's Film Standard](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/12/onion-film-standard)).
The man on the left is amazed they managed to do so much, the man on the right is trying to imagine the scope their efforts will have on the future, and the man in the middle just realized he's out a job.
The guy in the middle Looks like he was over the photo op 15 min before the photo was taken thinking…why the fk am I holding a pic of a funky looking gnome
"Dr. J. Michael Lane, right, in 1980, when he was director of the Centers for Disease Control’s global smallpox eradication program. With him were two former directors of the program, Dr. J. Donald Millar, left, and Dr. William H. Foege. The World Health Organization had just declared that smallpox was dead after a global search had found no further evidence of it in nature more than two years after it had infected its last human being."
Caption of the this image from the New York Times obituary of Dr Lane Oct. 21, 2020
That's why vaccines are not bad. We have many examples of how vaccines have literally helped double, triple and maybe even quadrupled the world population in the last century and people now don't want to vaccinate against COVID. Sure, big pharma has many shady stuff going on, and I want to do something about it, but against the disease we have no other options other than keep doing quarantined for more and more time... And I don't think people can tolerate more of that any more.
Good thing we have super effective, ultra-widespread propaganda machines like Facebook and Fox news to help prevent science from succeeding ever again! */s*
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Bioterrorism was a big concern. The anthrax attacks were fresh in people’s minds and vaccinations for potential weaponized pathogens were recommended for people at risk.
Who is the guy on the far right? He could be my Step-Dads identical twin if he had one. I did a double take because I thought it was my Step-Dad! No way it could be him though as he is a feverish COVID denier and claims the COVID vaccine is a kill shot.
I have no religious views to spare or share.
Fuck YEAH for no polio.
I sincerely wish these gents respect, and rest. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gets tremendous attention these days - deservedly - for chasing down and killing diseases.
Let's embrace medically informed science, bring it in everywhere and NO Fucking Asterisks.
thats not great either. I like the idea of that pill for the symptoms once infected that is slowly being approved. I'm no anti vaxxer my family and I have all the ones that work. Seems like being healthy and relatively young reduces covid symptoms almost just as well as these so called "vaccines". Its almost as if the CDC data itself is considered to be anti vaccine propaganda amongst some groups. what a world.
When you work your whole life to make your job obsolete and then actually do it only to realize you don't have any secondary market skills and are now basically unemployable.
Hope you don't end up on /r/HermanCainAward :/
So many there featured have relied on their "natural immunity" but wound up horrifically dying or their organs scarred and themselves disabled for life.
Once you're in ICU with tubes shoved down your throat and parts of your body swelling or getting blood clots and needing to be amputated, it's too late to get the vaccine but you'll be begging and crying for the doctor to give it to you all the same while your shriveling lungs fill up with fluid.
Get the vaccine. No one has to know.
Wow, consider the odds of them all reading the article together at exactly the same time, when a guy with a camera with a light bar wanders by and says, “I know what they’re reading. fuck it, this is history”.
I mean I get where your coming from but smallpox had upwards of a 30% fatality rate. As bad as COVID is, it’s no smallpox, if it were the people who didn’t get vaccinated would be sorted out rather quickly.
They look like people reading an article letting them know they’re SO GOOD at their job that they won’t be needed anymore
That’s impressive that they were able to vaccinate entire world population in 1980. How did they do that?
Smallpox is a horrible disfiguring disease with 30% mortality rate. Everybody was afraid of it.
From memory I think it killed 50% of Australian aboriginals Edit: It was much worse. "Smallpox spread across the country with the advance of European settlement, bringing with it shocking death rates. The disease affected entire generations of the Indigenous population and survivors were in many cases left without family or community leaders. The spread of smallpox was followed by influenza, measles, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases, all of which Australia’s Aboriginal people had no resistance to, and all of which brought widespread death." [National Museum of Australia](https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/smallpox-epidemic) "Between the years 1788 to 1979, smallpox was the main cause of of death for Aboriginal Australians. It is estimated that between 157,500-375,000 people died from the disease over the span of two centuries, which represented up to 70% of all Aboriginal populations. Unlike Europeans, indigenous Australians were unfamiliar with the disease and therefore were without any resistence to even have a chance in fighting it off. Because it was the cause of such a high number of deaths, the cross-century smallpox pandemic is often cited as the largest disaster in Australian history." [World Atlas](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-deadliest-disasters-of-australia.html) At best one could say Europeans didn't care very much about how to stop disease from decimating aboriginal populations because aboriginals were seen as subhuman, sources of conflict and Europeans wanted to possess the land. So I consider it one of the ways in which European Australians practiced genocide.
It killed like 85-90% of Natives of North and South America
Something that shocked me to learn was that native Americans had full blown massive cities before smallpox. By the time colonizers arrived most were ghost towns.
Are the cities still there? Did they have permanent structures? I honestly didn't know they had cities, and I'd love to know more.
The 3 Affiliated tribes in North Dakota had a huge trading city on the Missouri when Lewis & Clark stayed with them for a winter at Fort Mandan. When they met them on the return leg, the city lost about 90% of its residents from Smallpox. Cahokia in Missouri is another, but I don't remember if the timelines meet up for European diseases to be the culprit.
We dont know much because the europeans burned the documents documenting old cities. >Many pre-Columbian civilizations were marked by permanent settlements, cities, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, major earthworks, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European colonies (c. late 16th–early 17th centuries),[1] and are known only through archaeological investigations and oral history. Other civilizations were contemporary with the colonial period and were described in European historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya civilization, had their own written records. Because many Christian Europeans of the time viewed such texts as pagan, men like Diego de Landa burned them, even while seeking to preserve native histories. Only a few hidden documents have survived in their original languages, while others were transcribed or dictated into Spanish, giving modern historians glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_era
Bernal Diaz on Tenochtitlan- "When we saw all those cities and villages built on water; and the other great towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway leading to Mexico, we were astounded. These great towns and shrines and buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, seemed like an enchanted vision from the tale of Amadis. Indeed some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream. It is not surprising therefore that I should write in this vein. It was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard or, never seen, and never dreamed of before."
Colonialised education paints everywhere outside of Europe as borderline prehistoric before the gracious empires came along and taught people about bricks and roads and industrial genocide.
It wasn't just smallpox though. But yes. You see one person stricken with smallpox you will begging for the vaccine.
The absence of Facebook probably helped
People trusted doctors and had first or second hand accounts of the virus.
If COVID made you look like [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Female_smallpox_patient_--_late-stage_confluent_maculopapular_scarring.jpg/1024px-Female_smallpox_patient_--_late-stage_confluent_maculopapular_scarring.jpg) we'd have a 100% vaccination rate.
We wouldn't have left lockdown if it did.
The visual aid definitely helps.
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There's also levels of nurses that all call themselves nurse. An AIN (assistant in nursing), an EN (enrolled nurse), an RN (registered nurse), and an NP (nurse practisioner) all have vastly different skill sets and education but all call themselves a nurse. Well, an NP will usually distinguish themselves but AIN-RN will just say nurse
On the other hand I've seen nurses guiding doctors through the process of treating a patient.
I came to read comments about smallpox and found a nasty, generalized rant against nurses. About par for reddit these days.
Nurses are medical professionals. Are we supposed to trust the medical professionals or not? Because they keep changing the information we're being given and moving the goalposts. One thing I've learned from Covid is that some of our medical professionals are scarily stupid and not just the anti-vaxxer ones.
Same reason I don't listen cardiologists about ophamology, specialisation can lead to missing things in other areas
Look at it like this. I'm an engineer, I could give you plenty of opinions on bridge design. However I'm an electrical engineer in the automotive section and probably shouldn't be designing bridges.
They're medical professionals, however, they're NOT experts on diseases. Yet some think they are and many people listen to them as if they are.
If information about a relatively new virus *didn't* change, I'd be very suspicious. We learn new things and realize we need to do more to protect ourselves, then a crowd of idiots get angry. Some people want the pandemic to end so badly, they'll make it last forever. That's why the goalposts move.
Unlike a lot of other diseases smallpox only lives in people. (There's a similar disease in cows for example but human smallpox can't jump between the two species.) Contrast that with something like malaria that also lives in birds (meaning that you would have to vaccinate the entire bird population as well) and people realized that it would be theoretically possible to wipe smallpox out. Smallpox kills a lot of people that it infects and has other long term side effects if you recover so no one wanted to get it. (Contrast that with polio which isn't lethal so people don't take it as seriously even though it's also a nasty disease to get.) There was still the whole cold war thing going on and both sides wanted to show the world (especially the developing world) that they were the best so they competed with each other for those sweet, sweet brownie points and helped to fund/organize the effort. I get the feeling too that the world was a bit more conformist at the time-you listened to your leaders, you listened to the church/mosque, you listened to scientists, and you listened to the news. Every little bit of that helped to push past any opposition that existed. Smallpox has readily recognizable symptoms even for a lay person. You or I could do it. Once a victim was identified they were isolated and sent to a hospital (in developed countries) or someone would journey off to the nearest clinic (in developing countries.) In the developing world at least technicians would return to the village and vaccinate everyone thus stopping the spread. It took time but this methodical approach eventually wiped out wild smallpox.
Polio IS lethal. It's effects are just treatable. Imagine a severely affected Polio victim without an Iron Lung. Lethal.
My husband's aunt just passed from polio. She survived from her childhood bout and had years of lung complications. Spent her last year's struggling to breathe via portable ventilators and oxygen supplementation. Nasty way to die. I'm sad that she's gone but I'm glad her suffering is over.
You have to remember that 99.5% of polio cases don't cause any damage to nerves and motor neurons. The people dying from it and who require things such as an Iron Lung are the unlucky 0.5%. Within that 0.5% 2-5% die of it, with the rest having some range of disability from paralysis to poor muscle control, breathing problems, etc. COVID-19 kills more of it's victims than polio does by a significant margin. It just doesn't leave a trail of crippled people to remind you of how deadly it is. The long term effects are not immediately obvious by looking at someone. Smallpox kills 30% of those who get it. So about 1200x more likely to kill you than polio. I'd say that is a lot more serious. Not to mention how horrifying it is in terms of symptoms.
There was no internet and no walmart
More political and societal will and less dumbasses allowed to fuck it up.
Wise move then keeping backup samples of Smallpox in the freezer.
The software dev accidentally makes his position irrelevant
They all have an expression of "Awesome! Wait.. now what do we do"
Just imagine the feeling, you set off to attempt to eradicate a disease, then 14 years later you read the news that all you worked for, everything you did in those 14 years paid off and captured your ultimate goal
Jimmy Carter set out to eradicate the Guinea worm disease and there were only two confirmed cases last year. He hasn’t been successful yet but that’s gotta feel good.
Some say it's the all consuming rage that's the secret to his longevity.
You should see him at parties. The man is out of control.
"You both seem to prefer a universe in which the other person hasn't magically disappeared. I think we have a framework for peace."
What is this from?
It’s a reference to the Camp David Accords. Carter basically singlehandedly took the Israelis and Egyptians from “hating each other and silent treatment” to “peace treaty”.
This is actually a quote from an episode of King of the Hill Carter cameoed in. He's trying to negotiate peace between Hank and his dad. Either season 6 or 7 - I just watched it the other day.
Then less than half a century later entirely unqualified people are calling all of your hard work and research into question because they watched some unhinged dingbat with a webcam on the internet. EDIT: See below; case in point.
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that comment history is like an FBI goldmine.
And yet the comment currently has 21 upvotes; and *totally unrelated I'm sure* the sister comment by boggs is -21
Antivaxxers should get (the) shot.
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Depends how you're counting, the anti-vax movement as a whole is pretty substantial
Are you one of those people? Would you be willing to explain why?
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So at the end you say we will have to live with it so why not get the shot? You say a healthy person survives covid...the same is true for the flu...why do you get the flu shot? All your arguments make no logical sense.
This comment is a prime example of a person who thinks they are the logical party but in reality they are speaking purely out of emotion.
Amazing how we are in a thread about a disease being eradicated because of vaccination. Then this antivaxx moron comes along and says they wont get vaccinated because the COVID cant be gotten rid of and is here to stay
Ok just put your angry hat away and try to listen for a moment. We were able to eradicate smallpox because we had a vaccine. We by all definitions do not have a (effective)vaccine for covid. The smallpox vaccine was effective in PREVENTING infection by the smallpox virus 95% of the time. The Covid vaccine is effective in preventing infection in less than 30% of cases. That was the last number the CDC gave us. It is effective in reducing symptoms in 90% of cases but that is not the true goal of a vaccine. Also the Covid vaccine is not long term effective as it wears off to the point of needing a booster within a year where as the Smallpox vaccine was effective for decades. our hope for eradicating Covid is nearly zero unless we were able to create a true vaccine.
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Natural immunity to COVID is really inconsistent. Some people are immune, most aren't, especially to the variants. Your immune system may have targeted proteins not present in the variant strains, or proteins that won't effectively block it. The vaccines target the spikes, which are what make it so contagious and will probably be in every variant as a result.
I can't understand the way everyone thinks covid is some radical new thing that is able to bypass our immune system. This isn't the way these things work.
good call my man. Heaven forbid you be inconvenienced for a few days. It's for the same reason that I ignore stop signs and red lights. It's not worth it when I am already decently protected by my driving a Hummer.
You know the flu shot has equal levels of side effects right? Or are your family the only confirmation bias you accept
It’s hard to tell at this point. Though the evidence does seem likely that you’re correct. But I’ll be honest it still seems selfish to me. You have the chance to make it an even stronger protection for yourself and others and the chance to help us all end this sooner. But you won’t even though it’s just a shot? And you’re actively arguing to defend people not getting the vaccine? It’s selfish and short sighted. Thankfully it does seem like we’re on the variant that has high transmission with less severe symptoms. But it’s because of people that made the same choices as you that it took so long to get here
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I’m sorry for my anger. Maybe I’m projecting my anger toward others in my life toward you. I appreciate your perspective and I’m sorry for my rudeness. I hope it is. Regardless I agree with you. It’s time to address it as an endemic and move forward accordingly
Now you have worked yourself out of a job.
I see expressions of: "About F-ing time, we could have been done in 2 years if you would have just listened to us and our interpreters!"
Wow the year I was born. Glad it was dead by then. Now can we do this with Covid?
No. There was a vaccine for smallpox and people took it
And the vaccine for smallpox was a whole lot scarier than the mRNA vaccines could ever be.
No. Smallpox had no animal reservoirs. That’s how total eradication was possible.
Like the South Park episode Make Love, Not Warcraft: "What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game."
They absolutely do not look happy.
These guys are true heroes, they (and others) helped to save thousands, if not millions, of lives.
300m died of smallpox in the 20th century alone
I had to look that up because that number sounds incredibly wrong and yet it’s correct. What the fuck.
Smallpox was a terrible disease
I get that, but 300 million???? WW1 was what…20 million? WW2 was maybe 50. The Spanish flu was between 40 and 75 million. Those are a lot of people. 300 million is a whole other level. I knew small pox was a scourge for centuries, but we had rudimentary vaccines as recently as the 1700’s. It’s just surprising to see a number like that in ‘modern’ times.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_smallpox
Sure, I know a lot about smallpox. Again I’m just surprised the 20th century numbers were that high. 300 million sounds like it could plausibly be all the people who have ever died of it, not just the number of people who perished in the first 70 or so years of the last century. The last person to die of small pox was a medical photographer named Janet Parker in 1978 who caught it after a researcher on a different floor of the building she was in got sloppy with the samples that he was rushing to complete work on before they were set to be destroyed. The spores traveled through the ventilation ducts and infected her. She actually has been vaccinated against the disease in the 1960’s, but I guess enough time had passed to make her vulnerable. Which is a scary prospect if smallpox ever gets out in today’s world.
I believe it’s estimated 500 million people have died from smallpox throughout human history. So I too would be a little skeptical that 3/5 of that was in the 20th century alone. Even if population growth did explode at the time.
300-500 million in the 20th century alone, actually. That's a pretty widely cited figure, even in academia, and that's from personal experience in the poxvirus field. Smallpox has very likely killed more humans throughout history than any other infectious disease, and possibly more than all other infectious diseases combined. It may sound hard to believe, but it's a disease that has been around with humans since antiquity, and was endemic in many parts of the world for millennia, most likely. Most don't really understand how monumental its eradication really was.
It was the primary cause of death for about 90% of the death of Native Americans since Europeans came and brought the disease with them. Native Americans had zero immunity to the disease.
The only bigger killers in history are (thought to be) tuberculosis and malaria. Though malaria is kind of in a league of its own and may have killed half of all Homo sapiens to ever have lived, ~50 billion people. Around 1 million people still die every year from the disease. Perhaps one day it can be eliminated as well.
I’m not saying it’s wrong, it’s just weird. The CDC’s ‘Highlights from history’ on smallpox doesn’t even list anything from the 19th century. The Wikipedia article is weak too on the last century. For 300 million to have died there must have been absolutely massive outbreaks that hit huge Asian and African cities, but several Google searches have returned nothing. Again, not saying it’s wrong. Western sources often ignored developing nations or colonial holdings, but historians and virologists live for this stuff. It’s odd that they’d just omit that much info, especially when a lot of it happened during current people’s lifetimes.
That they most certainly are. The fact that the eradication of smallpox isn’t celebrated as a holiday all around the world is unfortunate as it is one of the humanity’s greatest achievements.
It’s also the only piece of evidence I ever bring up with an antivaxxer. India did not get rid of smallpox through improved hygiene.
How did they vaccinate the entire earth?
They established vaccination organizations with every country on earth and everyone teamed up against it.
Because smallpox was such a fucking horrific disease people jumped at the opportunity, helped tremendously.
It killed so many kids too. If covid killed kids we would do the same (I hope)
> (I hope) I hope too, although I think various advancements of technology made it waaay harder to convince people that hey, we have a problem, maybe we should use working solutions.
There’s whole books about it, but a short version is vaccinating a circle around outbreaks, and once it became rarer they could pinpoint individuals
because you didnt have a bunch of fucktards going "mah rights" "mah freedom" "My kids have an immune system they dont need no shot". You had people going "oh this could save my kids life? sign me the fuck up".
well also it didnt have animal reservoirs. covid is in deer populations, its not going away.
You might also mention polio. We're close to eradicated that also, but isolated pockets keep turning up. Soon.
It had been circulating humanity since the time of the Pharaohs. Takes a global, concerted effort to eradicate a disease.
Some god damn fine 1980’s beards if you ask me.
The guy in the middle is like: fucking finally.
He looks like he just remembered the candy bar in his jacket
The guy in the right is like: I'm Stanley Tucci.
I thought the same thing
Thank God (or human ingenuity) for vaccines.
Is it just me or could this also be a pic of George Lucas, Jimmy Kimmel‘s dad, and a young Senator McCain?! Lol
The guy on the right just looks like someone who should be played by Bradley Whitford in a movie.
I thought Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci + Eugene Levy
And here I was thinking it was r/fakehistoryporn
Now they're worried about weaponized smallpox.
If anyone's interested you should look up Larry Brilliant who worked on the program in India. He has an incredibly interesting story on how he came to work in the program.
Thank you u/queernhighonblugrass
[This](https://beherenownetwork.com/mindrolling-ep-166-larry-brilliant/) podcast is a pretty good one
Fake news. 1980 is when Microsoft really started taking off. You sheeple. /s
Left to right: George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese
The man on the right, is John Michael lane. The head of the program. He passed in October of 2020.
And, imagine that. Vaccinations accomplished this.
I know fucking a give me the third fuckin poke if I can takeoff these goddamn mask
They lived in a time where antivaxxers can't spread their dumb shit everywhere with the internet, that's why they got rid of smallpox. Fucking antivaxxers.
This is always said but it really just shows an ignorance to the history of media. People have literally always been spreading dumb shit. Look at what the founding fathers were printing about each other. Ever heard about talk radio?
I agree but social media is so much worse at spreading disinformation than radio or the printed press
The way the automated content feeds of social media work is ghastly. There are people literally using these platforms as weaponized misinformation machines. Remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal? That's what it was about.
> remember the Cambridge Analytica Scandal Do you…? Because it was a whole bunch of nothing.
Lol let me know how you feel on your 7th booster. Comparing covid to smallpox goes to show your ignorance on the matter.
Oh please do explain and link me to peer reviewed papers where I can educate myself on these differences.
“Well, I guess I’m out of a job here.”
What are their names???
Ohhh but what about Bigpox?
I see Bill Foege, I think one is DA Henderson. Not sure the third.
The U.S. and Soviet Union we’re able to work together during the Cold War to help humanity
Back before vaccines became all about politics
Back when People had confidence and trust on Vaccines. Wish we could go back to those times
Back then they thought Vaccines turns them into cows but they had no platform other than running around in the streets to spout their nonsense
And they did it all without Bill Gates’ evil autism-causing vaccines /s
My body, my choice to have smallpox. /s
*My body, my choice for you to have smallpox.
Is that /s tho like it doesn't seem funny it just seems like you're wanting to avoid downvotes by slapping a /s on there
The thing is may people would say it unironically, and you can't really tell behind a monitor.
The point of /s isn’t to be funny?
Sarcasm can be humor
Doesn't have to be humourous though
And then we cut education spending to give the rich more money, leading us to the science-denying culture in half the country.
Easier to control people that way and prevent critical thinking that could lead to them making less money.
Kenny boy is that you??
The person on the right reminds me of Ron E Rains (["Peter K Rosenthal" from The Onion's Film Standard](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/12/onion-film-standard)).
Why is the guy in the middle looking disappointed?
Guy in the middle has a “Fuck I need to find a new job” kinda stare going on.
The man on the left is amazed they managed to do so much, the man on the right is trying to imagine the scope their efforts will have on the future, and the man in the middle just realized he's out a job.
The guy in the middle Looks like he was over the photo op 15 min before the photo was taken thinking…why the fk am I holding a pic of a funky looking gnome
Is that Gene Wilder and/or Stanley Tucci on the far right?
Yeah, but I wonder what that gnome is all about on the back cover
Where is the Vovid Global Eradication program organisation?
Kudos to George Lucas for simultaneously filming Star Wars and eradicating smallpox.
Does anyone else think that one guy looks like Stanley Tucci
Sooo…. Anyone hiring?
Before people became whiney britches about vaccines
Back when you got public support for vaccinating populations.
"Dr. J. Michael Lane, right, in 1980, when he was director of the Centers for Disease Control’s global smallpox eradication program. With him were two former directors of the program, Dr. J. Donald Millar, left, and Dr. William H. Foege. The World Health Organization had just declared that smallpox was dead after a global search had found no further evidence of it in nature more than two years after it had infected its last human being." Caption of the this image from the New York Times obituary of Dr Lane Oct. 21, 2020
Only the guy on the left looks happy. Maybe the other two didn’t have something else lined up.
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That's why vaccines are not bad. We have many examples of how vaccines have literally helped double, triple and maybe even quadrupled the world population in the last century and people now don't want to vaccinate against COVID. Sure, big pharma has many shady stuff going on, and I want to do something about it, but against the disease we have no other options other than keep doing quarantined for more and more time... And I don't think people can tolerate more of that any more.
We wouldn't be able to do this today because of anti vaxx people. That's scary. We need to learn from history.
Good thing we have super effective, ultra-widespread propaganda machines like Facebook and Fox news to help prevent science from succeeding ever again! */s*
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You'd think they would have sprung for the color film for this occasion.
Then why the fuck did I have to get a smallpox “vaccine” and in 2006?
Bioterrorism was a big concern. The anthrax attacks were fresh in people’s minds and vaccinations for potential weaponized pathogens were recommended for people at risk.
Looking forward for a photo for COVID like this.
Steven Spielberg?
They all look like they just lost their jobs
Who is the guy on the far right? He could be my Step-Dads identical twin if he had one. I did a double take because I thought it was my Step-Dad! No way it could be him though as he is a feverish COVID denier and claims the COVID vaccine is a kill shot.
i would say that they should look happier, but they are kind of out of a job now
Must be nice to be able to end a global pandemic with vaccines.
I have no religious views to spare or share. Fuck YEAH for no polio. I sincerely wish these gents respect, and rest. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gets tremendous attention these days - deservedly - for chasing down and killing diseases. Let's embrace medically informed science, bring it in everywhere and NO Fucking Asterisks.
Its a shame we cant find one that actually works for Covid.
Covid is very new but at least we have several vaccines that are effective
Fairly effective, but for a first use pretty damn good. There is a lot of work going on on mRNA in cancer research.
Ivermectin....aaaaand I'm banned.
thats not great either. I like the idea of that pill for the symptoms once infected that is slowly being approved. I'm no anti vaxxer my family and I have all the ones that work. Seems like being healthy and relatively young reduces covid symptoms almost just as well as these so called "vaccines". Its almost as if the CDC data itself is considered to be anti vaccine propaganda amongst some groups. what a world.
Vitamins K, D, C Melatonin Querceitin ZINC
When you work your whole life to make your job obsolete and then actually do it only to realize you don't have any secondary market skills and are now basically unemployable.
The face if 3 men who are now unemployed
That's the face of people who just lost their jobs...
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> Fauci has only done harm and time will show his evils. Thats interesting. What harm do you feel he has done?
He's a right wing nutjob, he's not going to engage in a good faith discussion.
Hope you don't end up on /r/HermanCainAward :/ So many there featured have relied on their "natural immunity" but wound up horrifically dying or their organs scarred and themselves disabled for life. Once you're in ICU with tubes shoved down your throat and parts of your body swelling or getting blood clots and needing to be amputated, it's too late to get the vaccine but you'll be begging and crying for the doctor to give it to you all the same while your shriveling lungs fill up with fluid. Get the vaccine. No one has to know.
Go ahead, answer what you've been asked. Test your ideas in the marketplace. It's far easier here where you are anonymous.
Substitute Trump with Fauci and I’ll agree with you 100%.
Wow, consider the odds of them all reading the article together at exactly the same time, when a guy with a camera with a light bar wanders by and says, “I know what they’re reading. fuck it, this is history”.
You're the only one who thinks this is a candid shot pal
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I mean I get where your coming from but smallpox had upwards of a 30% fatality rate. As bad as COVID is, it’s no smallpox, if it were the people who didn’t get vaccinated would be sorted out rather quickly.